RIDING a horse can be daunting for anybody and even more so sometimes for those with a disability, and one specialist horse riding coach in the south-west is always looking to make the experience as reassuring for children as possible.

All-Abilities Equestrian manager and head coach, Sharyn van Someren has been running the facility in Warrong for about seven years and has recently identified a need for some of the participants to gain more confidence when facing up to the challenge of getting on a horse’s back.

“Someone like (client’s name) really struggled with the stairs,” she said.

“Whereas we felt that if we had something longer, wider and higher – that would make it easier.”

Ms van Someren was hoping to match up with either a men’s shed or some enterprising group of people with engineering and building skills amongst them to get a solution made that does more than just meet safety requirements.

With clients coming even more regularly from Hamilton, she has realised the need for a solution was increasing.

“The steps that we’ve got at the moment meet safety requirements, but I think we can do better,” she said.

“If they were longer or wider, it would obviously add to the safety.”

All-Abilities did have a borrowed platform once but had to return it to the owners and the time helped Ms van Someren see what could be improved from that design.

“We thought that instead of going for a ramp, we would go for a step set-up,” she said.

“We’ve talked about this for a couple of years … (we’ve asked ourselves) ‘what is going to be the best long-term solution?’.”

All Abilities Equestrian can be contacted at 0458 062 221 or on their Facebook page.